John Kroger Had the Best Résumé in Oregon

JOHN KROGER

AGE: 57

BEST KNOWN FOR: Becoming Oregon’s 16th attorney general after riding a used bike to the state from New York and falling in love with the trees.

For Oregonians watching from ground level, John Kroger was a comet. He appeared out of nowhere, burned brightly for a short time, and then vanished back into the darkness of space.

Few of Oregon’s adopted sons had a better résumé. Marine Corps (with jungle training in Panama), Yale (two degrees), Harvard Law, mob prosecutor. He rode to Oregon from New York on a used Trek bicycle, fell in love with the place, and decided to move.

He taught criminal procedure at Lewis & Clark Law School for a semester before getting tapped to join the team prosecuting energy company Enron for financial fraud. He won convictions of seven execs in the broadband unit, then came back to Oregon and won election as Oregon’s attorney general in November 2008, making it all look so easy.

Then came his time in the barrel. He alienated his staff in the Oregon Department of Justice and presided over some blunders. In April 2010, his environmental counsel, Brent Foster, resigned after he misrepresented his role in a Hood River County water quality case. Soon after, Sean Riddell, his hand-picked criminal justice chief, deleted emails relating to a controversial investigation. Also: DOJ had lost evidence in a triple murder case.

In late 2011, Kroger shocked the political class, announcing that he wouldn’t run again because of a “significant but not life-threatening medical condition.” He’s never said what it was.

Kroger’s star rose again in July 2012, when he became the 15th president of Reed College. It was an odd choice for an alternative school then known for its annual drug-fueled fest called Renn Fayre.

Kroger stayed at Reed for six years, stepping down in 2018. He has been something of a nomad since then, taking one-year gigs as: a professor at Harvard; chief learning officer at the U.S. Navy; and vice president at the Aspen Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank. In August 2021, he became CEO of the Rodel Institute, an offshoot of Aspen that trains leaders for public service.

Kroger didn’t return emails seeking an interview, but he might not be done with Portland. He and his wife, Michele Toppe, who’s vice provost for student affairs at Portland State University, according to her LinkedIn profile, bought a house in Southwest Portland in April 2021.

Correction: The original version of this story said that a triple murderer had been allowed to go free because Kroger’s agency had lost key evidence, which it later found. The accused murderer, Philip Scott Cannon, had been convicted in 1998 but that conviction was vacated in 2009, and he was granted a new trial. The evidence in question was for that trial. DOJ found the evidence in 2011, but it has never brought new charges against Cannon.